“It’s not where we are overall, but it’s where we were that moment. You want to open a dialogue, but—you weren’t here. The Shepherds weren’t here. In my limited interactions with parahumans, I keep on noticing—over and over again, even the good ones, we’ll hear you say that you forget our names, or we all sort of ‘blend into each other’. Again and again. There’s a disconnect, where we don’t even rate.”

“I remembered your name, Gary,” Dragon said.

Gary shrugged. He looked around at the fallen, at the wounded—the critically wounded were already being taken care of.

“The power may go out when I disconnect to take people to the hospital,” Dragon spoke, her voice carrying.

“Flashlights,” Gary called out, giving the orders. “Lanterns, same as before. Don’t conserve battery.”

Back to work, to the impossible numbers, and the hills with peaks that seemed to climb out of reach as he ascended.

But different, now. People avoided the Shepherds. They cleaved closer to him. People had felt lost, confused, scared, and his explanation had been an easy one to accept. It made sense, for one thing, and it spoke to justifiable fears that every single person harbored even before the first and best of the parahumans had wiped out landmasses and extinguished a good portion of the population.

They were angry, and the snippets of conversation where people voiced their anger were audible here and there. He could have stopped them and he didn’t. In the wake of this tragedy, of so many hurt and killed, they needed someone to blame and this was an instance of blame that had been a long time coming.

Dragon’s ship disconnected from the local grid, and Gary Nieves and his people were left in darkness.

From the safety of darkness, someone threw something in the direction of the Shepherds. The girl in the moon costume raised a hand, and stopped the thrown object in the air.

He could have said something to the thrower, but he didn’t.

Silence became murmurings and before the murmurings became a roar, the Shepherds left for another patrol of the area. They didn’t return to the main camp.

⊙

Gary tried not to begrudge people for the lines, especially when it was an effect of population saturation in small areas, but he hadn’t eaten earlier, and the services hadn’t had food. Not with people going lean for the coming winter.

He stood among people in clothes with cement on the pants leg or paint on the edge of the sleeve. Mud-caked boots flowed seamlessly into mud-caked pants, in places. He, in turn, wore a black suit, black tie, and a somber expression.

“Mr. Nieves?”

The person asking was narrow, Asian, with a very pointed chin and short hair. He wore a red tie with a gray shirt.

“Can I help you?”